Feds probe gender equality in sports at Denison U.

Sunday

Mar 30, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 30, 2014 at 10:39 AM

Federal civil-rights officials are investigating a complaint that Denison University offers fewer athletic opportunities to women than to men. Women made up 58 percent of the student body in 2013 but only 42 percent of Denison athletes, according to federal data.

Collin Binkley, The Columbus Dispatch

Federal civil-rights officials are investigating a complaint that Denison University offers fewer athletic opportunities to women than to men.

Women made up 58 percent of the student body in 2013 but only 42 percent of Denison athletes, according to federal data. The complaint blames the university and alleges that it violates Title IX, a federal law banning gender discrimination.

Denison officials say they weren’t given a copy of the complaint, but it was sent to reporters by a loosely organized group of Title IX advocates nationwide led by Herb Dempsey, a 76-year-old retired teacher who lives more than 2,000 miles from Granville, the home of Denison.

By his count, Dempsey has filed thousands of complaints against schools across the United States from his home in Graham, Wash. His crusade for gender equality started years ago when he saw that his daughter’s successful high-school volleyball team was often overshadowed by the school’s struggling football team.

Now, he hunts for gender imbalances in federal data and scours online satellite images to compare sports facilities for men and for women.

“When they have disproportionately high opportunities to participate for men, and they’re still spending a disproportionate amount of money to attract men, then you know that the system is really sick,” Dempsey said last week.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed that it is investigating Denison but wouldn’t provide the complaint.

Denison officials say that the school offers more varsity sports for women than for men and that surveys show it is meeting women’s demand for sports opportunities on campus.

The complaint, which was filed this year, says: “If Denison University had provided women in 2013 with proportional athletic opportunities, an additional 90 women would be able to play collegiate sports.”

Dempsey said he didn’t file the complaint about Denison but knows the person who did. Fearing retaliation, he wouldn’t identify him or her. His group –– called “Old Guys for Title IX” –— provided a copy of the complaint with its author’s name blacked out.

But Dempsey said he is familiar with the Denison case and has studied federal data. In more-colorful language, he said the school’s numbers aren’t good.

“At first, I thought the data was wrong,” he said. “The only way you could get to that point in most colleges is if you left out a major chunk of something.”

The disparity at Denison isn’t the worst in Ohio, but it has grown in recent years.

About a third of Ohio schools have wider gaps, according to federal data. The widest is at Otterbein University, where women make up 62 percent of students but 32 percent of athletes. Many schools spend two or three times as much money to recruit men for sports as they do to recruit women, data show.

Even with gaps, schools can comply with the law in other ways: They can show that they are meeting the demand for sports among students, or that they have improved over time. Denison leaders said they can show both.

Teams for women have been added when they demanded it. The school has 12 varsity programs for women and 11 for men. Students didn’t voice a demand for new sports in a 2010 survey, Seth Patton, the school’s vice president of finance and management, said in a statement.

“Because there are additional opportunities available, we can only assume that the disparity between men and women’s participation is equal to the disparity in their interest,” Patton wrote, adding that the door is open for requests for sports.

Some experts question that position.

More than half of all high-school students play a sport, according to national surveys. But at Denison, 18 percent of women are on a team.

“That’s tiny; they could double that,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation. “Frankly, typically schools are not in compliance, and they are waiting for a complaint or a lawsuit.”

Hogshead-Makar, a gold-medal swimmer in the 1984 Olympics, admires the work of Dempsey and the dozen or so others in his group. But their many complaints can increase pressure on overburdened federal investigators, she said.

Dempsey said that’s the point. He wants the Department of Education to take a harder line against schools that don’t comply. Dempsey isn’t optimistic that the government will force Denison to follow the law. He got involved, he said, “to show that they won’t.”

In the meantime, Denison hasn’t planned changes.

“We continually encourage all our students to participate in our athletics programs,” Patton wrote, “and there are currently numerous additional open opportunities available for women who want to participate.”

cbinkley@dispatch.com

@cbinkley

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